LOS ANGELES, California — A burglar stole $35,000 in unique artwork from a store in the affluent Pacific Palisades area last Friday — and at least two passers-by reportedly failed to stop him even as they caught him in the act of breaking into the store.

Local artist Katie O’Neill said that 11 paintings had been stolen from her store, which also offers art classes to local children.

The Santa Monica Daily Press reported that two witnesses actually saw the burglary in progress but did not manage to stop it:

Around 10:30 p.m., a Gelson’s employee [a grocery store across the street] saw a man that was described as black and about 6 feet tall, use a crowbar on the window, so he could open the door and gain access to the studio.

The employee shouted out, but the man was threatening to the employee and he backed down. Another person drove by and asked the man what he was doing and supposedly he said, “Some burglar robbed my store,” and that he was dealing with it.

The thief then went in and removed 11 paintings. Around 12:30 p.m., a friend of O’Neill’s who was driving by the store called her to say that someone had broken into the store.

Crime has skyrocketed in Los Angeles in the years since the Black Lives Matter movement took to the streets and outgoing Mayor Eric Garcetti bowed to demands to “defund the police,” cutting $150 million from the Los Angeles Police Department, over 10% of the budget.

The funding was ostensibly to be redistributed to “communities of color,” who presumably did not need police services.

Garcetti’s would-be replacements, Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) and local property developer Rick Caruso (D), have vowed to fight crime.

One of Caruso’s flagship shopping centers, the Palisades Village, is located just one block away from the burglarized store.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.